Still Standing: The Savage Years (15 page)

Times were getting so hard I was forced to sell some of the costumes to a second-hand clothes shop on Church Road. I got twenty-five quid for the Japanese kimono and a sequin dress; I knew that they were worth a lot more than that but beggars can’t be choosers. The woman proudly displayed them on mannequins in the shop window and it looked strange seeing my old drag in such familiar surroundings. When I walked past the shop with my mother one day, she stopped to have a look in the window.

‘Who the hell would wear something like that?’ She pointed to the kimono. ‘And look at that purple sequin evening dress, cut down to the belly button and slit to the hip. What kind of a trollop would wear that?’

If only she knew, I thought, moving her swiftly on in case the woman in the shop came out and dropped me in it. What would I be doing next to earn some cash?

I was counting out drugs on a kitchen table in a council flat over a betting office on the Prenton Hall Estate while two women hung over me watching my every move like predatory raptors, making sure that I distributed the little yellow pills fairly into two even piles.

‘We haven’t had any for ages,’ one of the women remarked, taking a long pull on her cigarette. ‘I could do with one now and then, takes the edge off.’

She started to cough, exhaling as she did so a dragon’s
breath of smoke that seemed to fill the room. I couldn’t help noticing her emaciated wrist, mottled with bruises, as she wiped her mouth with a crumpled tissue.

A whistle blew in the background. Neither of the women moved. The whistle grew stronger and louder until eventually the smaller of the two gave in.

‘Make sure she doesn’t nick any of mine,’ she warned me as she retreated down the hall. ‘I’ll just turn this bloody kettle off and I’ll be straight back.’

This was no Ken Loach scenario of inner city deprivation, nor had I turned to drugs to make a living, dealing out heroin to a pair of pillheads in a sordid squat. Far from it – I was in the cosy little sitting room of my two aunties, Annie and Chrissie, dividing up half a bottle of Valium between them that my mother had sent up. She had a repeat prescription from her doctor which meant a seemingly endless supply of Valium and Distalgesics at her disposal. She would dole them out in twists of tissue paper to her sisters and anyone else who needed a little balm for their frayed nerves.

Aunty Chris was, to coin her phrase, ‘crippled’ with duodenal ulcers. Beside her armchair was a little sewing table that played ‘The Isle Of Capri’ when you opened the lid, not that it was heard very often these days as the surface was covered in a mass of bottles and pots containing the vast amount of medication that she was required to take on a daily basis. It was not uncommon to find her at midday still in her dressing gown, a great quilted job from Brentford Nylons, with a crocheted shawl over her shoulders as further insulation against the cold. Sitting in her armchair hunched over the gas fire, fag in hand, she’d give me a quick lesson in pharmaceuticals.

‘See these,’ she’d say, proudly holding up a pot of pills, ‘one
of the most expensive drugs on the market, very few people have been prescribed them, they’re liquorice-based and supposedly a miracle cure for ulcers, and do you know what?’

‘No, what?’

‘They’re a pile of shite. Haven’t made any bloody difference at all.’

Aunty Chris was a shadow of her former self. She rarely went out except for doctors’ appointments, the occasional trip to the Plaza Bingo on Borough Road or if she ‘ran down to put a bet on’. She was painfully thin and hid her emaciated frame with layers of cardigans, nighties and scarves, not to mention the all-enveloping housecoat and crocheted shawl. As a reminder of her former glory she kept a sepia photograph of herself as a teenager in a gold frame next to her tablets. She really had been a beauty in her day, with exquisite bone structure and a sly twinkle in her eye. ‘Age and illness are cruel taskmasters,’ she’d lament as she gazed at the photograph of the lovely girl that she once was. ‘Enjoy your youth and good health, lad, while you’ve still got them.’

Aunty Chrissie died in March 1983. She’d been seriously ill but as always had refused to see a doctor, a throwback I suspect to the crippling poverty of her youth before the National Health Service when a doctor cost money and a spell in hospital might mean that you’d end up in a coffin. Maybe her refusal to seek medical help was because she feared a doctor would make a diagnosis she didn’t want to hear. Perhaps she preferred to carry on not making a fuss, convincing herself that there was nothing seriously wrong and that whatever it was would sort itself out.

Her sister, my aunty Anne, deeply concerned at the rate at which she was deteriorating, eventually defied her and after
colluding with my mother called the doctor. It was too late for Aunty Chrissie. Her heart gave out and she collapsed in the bathroom and died.

The back-street beauty and pride of the Birkenhead bus fleet who had raised her son in a time when unmarried mothers were looked upon as fallen women was gone for ever, leaving a gaping void that could never be filled. I was truly devastated that this remarkable woman who had left such a lasting impression and been such a huge inspiration to me all my life would never again greet me with the familiar ‘What the bloody hell do you want? You’re not up to no good, are you?’ as she answered the door to that flat above the betting office.

Underneath her tough veneer, cynical eye and scathing wit lay a heart of solid gold and a set of principles that are virtually non-existent today.

She was cremated on a cold morning at Landican Cemetery with no fuss and just a tiny posy of flowers on her coffin lid as she’d requested.

I still miss her.

As I sat in Liverpool’s Masquerade Club, a former Chinese restaurant below Clayton Square, one late November night, Harry, the owner, approached me with a bottle of cider. Harry was supposedly hard of hearing and when you spoke to him he had a habit of tilting his head towards you to enable him to catch every word you were saying. He was also very frugal when it came to handing out free drinks, so I was puzzled as to what I’d done to merit such generosity.

‘I believe you used to do a double act,’ he said, plonking the bottle of cider down in front of me. ‘I hear it was very good. Do you fancy doing a spot here for Christmas?’

I thanked him for the drink but explained that I had retired from drag.

‘What was that?’ he said, tilting his head forward.

I repeated what I’d just said, only a lot louder this time, but Harry still didn’t seem to hear.

‘How much do you charge for one half-hour spot?’ he asked.

Since I had no intention of performing in the Masquerade or any other club for that matter, I came out with the first figure that entered my head.

‘A hundred quid,’ I said casually.

‘
A hundred quid!
’ Harry shouted, nearly having a fit of apoplexy.

He heard that one clear enough, but to my surprise he agreed without question to pay what I considered an exorbitant fee. I couldn’t turn down a hundred quid, not in my dire financial circumstances, and before I knew it I’d agreed to appear as the Playgirls the night before Christmas Eve. Now all I had to do was find a partner.

‘I’m not doing it,’ Vera said when I informed him the next day he was about to appear at the Masquerade Club.

‘You bloody well are,’ I told him. ‘I’m not turning down the chance of earning a hundred quid.’

‘I’m going into hospital next week for me operation on me eye, how can I?’ he protested.

‘We don’t go on till the twenty-third, the eye will have healed by then.’

Vera was always having trouble with his eyes. A vicious mugging a few years earlier had left him with a detached retina and he was going into Birkenhead General Hospital for a few days to have it repaired.

‘I’ll make a tape up and bring the Walkman in and you can learn the show while you’re in hospital, give you something to do while you’re lying in bed.’

Even though I’d sworn I’d never have anything to do with drag again it was only for this one night, and I wasn’t about to turn my nose up at the opportunity of having fifty quid in my pocket over Christmas.

‘As soon as you come out of hospital, we’ll start rehearsing. You’re going to be fabulous, Vera,’ I said, refusing to take no for an answer.

‘But what about me make-up?’ Vera said.

‘I’ll do it.’

‘But I won’t be able to see without me glasses.’

‘You’ll manage.’

‘And costumes? What am I going to wear?’

‘You can wear mine, I’ve got plenty and I’ll take them in to fit you. Now get up them stairs and let’s get you into a couple of frocks. By the time I’ve finished with you, Vera Cheeseman, you’re going to be a star.’

Sighing loudly, he took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. ‘Why do I allow myself to be talked into these things by you?’ he asked, blinking like an owl. ‘Well, if I’m going to do it can I wear that red and white polka-dot dress?’

Vera was in the bag.

I got together a thirty-minute spot from all the old numbers I’d done as a Glamazon and a Playgirl, trying to keep it simple for Vera by giving him numbers that he more or less already knew.

I was more than a little alarmed when I collected him from hospital as he was very unsteady on his feet (a sight not unfamiliar to me over the years) and half of his face was covered by an enormous bandage. Would he be ready for the
twenty-third, less than two weeks away? He’d have to be, Harry had put the posters up in the club advertising us and there was already quite a buzz about our forthcoming appearance. There was no backing out now.

While Vera was in hospital I stayed at his brother’s house, looking after the dogs and spending the evenings altering costumes to fit him. As always we were doing ‘You Gotta Have A Gimmick’ from
Gypsy
and I was attaching Christmas tree lights to my old blue-sequinned bra and G-string, once part of a strip costume for Vera to wear as Electra. The lights were connected to an extension cord that plugged into the mains and had a drunken punter thrown a pint of lager over Vera he’d have no doubt fused the national grid.

I had to really work hard to convince Vera to go out on stage in such a skimpy outfit. Mine wasn’t much better for Mazeppa, just a few strips of black plastic hung with chains topped off with a gladiator helmet, but I didn’t care. Vera on the other hand wasn’t too happy at the prospect of standing in front of a packed club full of people, most of whom he knew, wearing not much more than a string of potentially lethal fairy lights.

As Vera slowly recovered, we rehearsed; the doctor had told him to rest and here he was bumping and grinding like a maniac and turning his lights on and off in time to the drum-rolls by means of a little switch in his hand. He was wearing an eye patch now as his eye was still slightly swollen and bruised, but nothing, I reassured him, that couldn’t be fixed with a bit of make-up.

On the night of Vera’s debut as the new Playgirl we got ready in Diane’s flat, putting Vera’s make-up on and then my own. The facilities in the Masquerade weren’t that good, even
though Harry had gone to the trouble of erecting a curtain at the back of the dance floor for us to do our quick changes behind. We’d had a dress run that afternoon with Sharon as our audience. Diane was sulking as she’d wanted to watch too but couldn’t as she was acting as our dresser and was stuck in the bedroom. We performed in the front room for Sharon, who sat cross-legged and open-mouthed on the floor, enraptured by all she was witnessing. It didn’t bother her in the least that her father was dressed in the teeniest of gladiator outfits and blowing a bugle between his legs. She took it all in her stride.

When I asked her what she’d liked best, she replied, ‘Vera dressed as Snow White.’ We did a little routine as Snow White and the Wicked Queen. Vera thought he made a beautiful Snow White when he put on the little black bobbed wig and the perfect replica of her costume that Hush had made for me last year, holding the frock out like she did in the animation and skipping around the room to ‘Whistle While You Work’.

‘I look just like her, don’t I?’ Vera kept saying. Sharon obviously thought so too. She was bedazzled by him, staring saucer-eyed in wonder at the vision before her.

I thought Vera would be petrified before the show, but he seemed unperturbed. His only concern was whether or not people would notice his eye. I’d done my very best to disguise the bruising and swelling with the aid of lots of make-up and thick false eyelashes, but even so I couldn’t help thinking that one half of his face had a look of Bette Davis while the other bore more than a hint of Anna May Wong.

The show went off without a hitch. Vera raised the roof when he switched his light bulbs on and by the time we got to the finale, a Phil Spector medley of Christmas songs, the crowd went wild.

I wanted to collapse with relief after the show as I’d privately had strong reservations about Vera’s ability to pull this off. My fears had been unfounded as Vera was a hit, we both were, and to celebrate we all got very merry on the drinks that punters kept buying us.

‘You’re mad if you don’t give this a go again,’ Diane said. ‘Look how you went down tonight. I’d give that agent a ring if I were you and get some bookings in.’

On cue, a guy in the audience stuck his head around the curtain and asked if we’d come and work his pub in Bolton in the New Year.

‘What do you think, Vera?’ I asked my new partner. ‘D’ya want to give it a go then? Shall I ring Paul up at the Stone Chair and get some work in?’

Vera was so giddy on success and booze that at that moment he’d have agreed to join the SS if I’d suggested it.

‘Why not?’ he said, bursting with confidence. ‘Say yes to the booking in Bolton and then first thing tomorrow get on that phone to Paul, tell him the Playgirls are back in business.’

The coach pulled into Leeds Bus Station. In the last eight months I must’ve made this trip from Liverpool over a hundred times. Vera was asleep in his seat with his mouth wide open and his face pressed up against the window. I gave him a shove to wake him.